8th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 8)

Sensitive and heart-touching!

Save your language to save your soul.

ANVITA ABBI, Linguist

RESMi SECKi Bozok Film Festivali 2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION 6th INTERNATIONAL FOLKLORE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 KERALA, INDIA 2023

Scholars have played an important role in preserving the Kusunda language.

Himal Khabar

OFFICIAL SELECTION Festival RNAB Sao Paulo 2022
BEST SCREENPLAY DOCUMENTARY International film & Entertainment festival Australia (IFEFA) 2022

Preserves and immortalizes a language on the brink of extinction.

Ramil Mercado, Asia Matters For America

OFFICIAL SELECTION Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions @ PinewoodStudios 2021
OFFICIAL SELECTION BALKAN CAN KINO ATHENS 2022
Logo of film "Gyani Maiya". © Subhashish Panigrahi, CC BY-SA 4.0

“Ms. Gyani Maiya Sen talked about the
heartbreaking situation: No one speaks Kusunda.”

—PHAN BẢO, Tuổi Trẻ

About the film

The Kusunda people were once a semi-nomadic hunter and gatherer community that settled in villages around the mid-western Nepalese district of Dang. They have long lost their native language Mihaq (Kusunda), to acculturation and other barriers to active use. The community also lost its 83-year-old elder Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda in 2020, the most and the only known fluent Kusunda speaker then. Filmed in Kulmor in the Dang District in 2018, this documentary is a memoir of Sen-Kusunda in her own words and a biography of her people who were forced to leave their language and cultural identity. Kusunda is being revived by Kamala Sen Khatri, Sen-Kusunda’s younger sister, and Uday Raj Aaley, a local researcher who is the key collaborator for this film.

This film was supported through a National Geographic Society grant.

BEST SCREENPLAY DOCUMENTARY International film & Entertainment festival Australia (IFEFA) 2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION 6th INTERNATIONAL FOLKLORE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 KERALA, INDIA 2023
RESMi SECKi Bozok Film Festivali 2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION BALKAN CAN KINO ATHENS 2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION Festival RNAB Sao Paulo 2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions @ PinewoodStudios 2021

Gyani Maiya was awarded Best Screenplay at the International Film & Entertainment Festival Australia (IFEFA) 2022, and was selected for the 6th International Folklore Film Festival 2023, Thrissur (India), Khamrubu International Short Film Festival 2023, Kamrup (India), Nepal America International Film Festival 2023, International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation at University of Hawaiʻi (US), Lanham (US), Balkan Can Kino, Athens (Greece), Bozok Film Festivali, Yozgat (Turkey), Festival RNAB, Sao Paulo, and Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions, Buckinghamshire (UK).

Theatrical Trailer

Stills

DATASHEET

TITLE
Gyani Maiya (English)
ज्ञानी मैया (Nepali)

LOGLINE
A formerly hunter-gather community stopped speaking their language for two generations, and linguists have predicted its death, declaring an 83-year-old the last living speaker. Will her lamenting revive the near-extinct language, her only identity?

CAMERAPERSON, RECORDIST, DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER
Subhashish Panigrahi

WRITER(S)
Subhashish Panigrahi, Uday Raj Aaley (Co-Writer), Sanjib Chaudhary (Co-Writer)

CAST
Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda (self)
Uday Raj Aaley (self)

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION/ORIGIN
Nepal

FILMING LOCATION(S)
Kulmor, Dang district, Nepal

DATE(S)
Year of Production 2018-2019
RELEASE DATE(S)
10 December 2019 (India—Limited Release)

DURATION
25 minutes (appx.)

GENRE
Documentary

DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
O Foundation

FILM WEBSITE
https://theofdn.org/film/gyani-maiya

PERMANENT ARCHIVE
https://archive.org/details/gyani-maiya

US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER (LCCN)
2020512171

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI/EIDR)
10.5240/52AE-86BB-F84D-03B2-D938-U

Reviews & Publications

FOR SCREENINGS, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS & OTHER QUERIES, CONTACT:

Subhashish Panigrahi

SCREENINGS